A skeptical left-liberal's blog, including skepticism about left-liberalism, but even more about other issues of politics. A skeptical look at Gnu Atheism, religion, social sciences, more. And me? I am who I am... more later...

November 04, 2013

The insurance sellout called #Obamacare

The failure of our neoliberal Dear Leader to push for a single-payer "Medicare for All" national health insurance program, rather than the hypercapitalist-driven, insurance-lobbyist written Obamacare, becomes clearer by the day.

Donna received the letter canceling her insurance plan on Sept. 16.
Her insurance company, LifeWise of Washington, told her that they'd
identified a new plan for her. If she did nothing, she'd be covered.

A
56-year-old Seattle resident with a 57-year-old husband and 15-year-old
daughter, Donna had been looking forward to the savings that the
Affordable Care Act had to offer.

But that's not what she found.
Instead, she'd be paying an additional $300 a month for coverage. The
letter made no mention of the health insurance marketplace that would
soon open in Washington, where she could shop for competitive plans, and
only an oblique reference to financial help that she might qualify for,
if she made the effort to call and find out. ...

Across the country, insurance companies have sent
misleading letters to consumers, trying to lock them into the
companies' own, sometimes more expensive health insurance plans rather
than let them shop for insurance and tax credits on the Obamacare
marketplaces -- which could lead to people like Donna spending thousands
more for insurance than the law intended. In some cases, mentions of
the marketplace in those letters are relegated to a mere footnote, which
can be easily overlooked.

"You never find an organization that is
collectively this good at Twitter," said Peter LaMotte, head of digital
communications practice at Levick, who advises major corporations on
using social media.

The story details just how much this is true, on Twitter as PR weapon..

Insurance companies playing a time-generated version of marketplace skimming to avoid poorer risks. (Which, in turn, is being spun in conservative press outlets, then attacked by Team Obama's Twitter-swarm, but still continuing to happen.)

“The company’s plans reflect its concern that the first wave of newly
insured customers under the law may be the costliest,” UHC Chief
Executive Officer Stephen Helmsley told
investors last October. “UnitedHealth will watch and see how the
exchanges evolve and expects the first enrollees will have ‘a pent-up
appetite’ for medical care. We are approaching them with some degree of
caution because of that.”

The company packed its bags and dumped its beneficiaries because it
wants its competitors to swallow the first wave of sicker enrollees only
to re-enter the market later and profit from the healthy people who
still haven’t signed up for coverage.

But, the state of California, playing its neoliberal version of hypercapitalized state politics, contributed to this:

The two insurers were also operating at a tax disadvantage in the state.
As California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones explained, “One of the
factors I believe contributed to this decision….is the special tax break
that California law gives to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which
has allowed and continues to allow those two companies to avoid paying
$100 million in state taxes a year.” “Aetna and United Healthcare don’t
get the special tax break provided to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield,
and so they faced a major competitive disadvantage in California.”

So, there you go.

Will Aetna and UHC demand their own tax breaks to come back in the market? Why wouldn't they?

Anyway, this is just the tip of an iceberg of a "national health care" plan that may only insure one-quarter or so of the currently uninsured, as I blogged before. Or maybe one-third, if we make allowance for the young uninsureds who will deliberately pay the tax penalty, which is modest, rather than buy insurance. (Wait for insurers to lobby for an increased penalty after Obama's out of office.)

So, there's shoes that will continue dropping for some time.

Yes, I will agree with Team Obama that we shouldn't judge Obamacare by a clunky website.

Instead, we should (faux outrage from Faux News types aside) judge it by how well insurers can ultimately game it.

Stay tuned for how much insurance companies cram inside that "80 percent for actual services" provision, as I blogged before, including cutting staff to make sure CEOs get their continued large cut. After all, some companies are already cutting commissions to sales agents.

Stay tuned for how little electronic patient data and records actually save, vs. how much money it makes for the companies creating their software, as I've blogged before. Also stay tuned for how little they're able to communicate with each other.

Stay tuned for the possibility of more employers dumping their health care coverage — as I've blogged before, in fact, more than once. Which will then lead us to further ask if there is that much savings from Obamacare or not, since that was a touted point.